Steel Your Faith :: For Susan Alcorn (1953-2025)
Photo: David Lobato
Photo: Joshua Burkett
I was first introduced to Alcorn’s music through the great Joshua Burkett of Mystra Records/Mystery Train Records sometime in April 2016 when we began working on a cassette compilation he was stringing together and asked if I was familiar with the pedal steel guitar legend’s work. With a great deal of esoteric exchange over a short period, he sent me a handmade copy of “Evening Tales,” an album he released on the Mystra label that featured individually hand-painted covers in an edition of four hundred copies, to be considered for review, which I gladly did. It was an atmospheric artifact dressed in cosmic cave paintings that sincerely bridged the galactic gap between country music’s first artist, Bud Isaacs, to lay the instrument on tape to the dynamical dwellings of Chuck Johnson and his ethereal elevations. I was stunned by the sheer volume of her calculated approach and the excitingly embracive elements she effortlessly conjured to express the melodic message she masterfully conveyed. A tonal trooper stomping across the stellar surface of foreign planets, Alcorn, born and raised in early 1950s Allentown, Pennsylvania, shattered the typical expectations of not only her instrument and its rich yet predictable history but also the limitations of what one can unlock within its complex DNA of ritualistic vibrations. Burkett later mentioned, “She liked her review and had never had a review of anything like it,” if you know anything about being on the other side of scribbling for sound culture, this is the greatest gift one could receive in this ever-changing landscape of unpredictability, especially from the graces of such an artist of her sonic status. Alcorn’s journey in music began as an infant when she would rest under her mother’s spinet piano, pressing the foot pedals and eventually singing classical and church music in her family’s living room throughout her adolescence. At the age of 21, during the early 1970s, Alcorn made a connection with a specific instrument that would not only define the entirety of her life but initiate a radical revolution in the world of pedal steel guitar as we know it.
“I view the instrument I play, the pedal steel guitar, not as an object to be mastered but as a partner with which to share with the listener a meaning, depth, and hopefully profound awareness of each fragile moment we’re together. It is this dynamic of which I try to be cognizant in both my writing and performance.”
Alcorn’s harmonious honesty was paramount and bravely explored by artists who dared to venture into the soulless shadows of human nature and its peaking paranoia. Whether it was casting soothsaying spells into the sistering realms of spirituality or plastering mortal music notes onto the walls and ceilings of some of the world’s most revered rooms, the late musicians’ melodic magic will be missed and constantly celebrated for the rest of eternity. Unleashing a universally compelling catalog that ultimately defined the instrument’s most cosmically charged body of work, Alcorn recorded dozens of albums and various collaborations throughout her career, with two titles in 2024 alone. Her esoteric economy for structure and sermon can not be replicated, replaced, or radically resisted. From London Improvisers Orchestra and Ellen Fullman & Friends to the unforgivable Susan Alcorn Quintet, the cosmic capacity to which Alcorn operates is astronomically advanced and atmospherically autonomous. A volcanic veteran of her craft, she will be severely missed.
